Singapore continues to lead the ranking of Asia-Pacific financial centres by inward foreign direct investment (FDI) with an estimated total of $944.1m invested in the Asian hub between February 2016 and January 2017.
Shanghai and Hong Kong follow, mirroring the top three position of the previous year’s ranking, though in all cases overall FDI values have shrunk. For Singapore and Shanghai the drop was of about 15%; in Hong Kong the slide was minimal.
FDI inflows to Beijing and Tokyo, in fourth and fifth place, on the other hand, rose a substantial amount, at 81% and 105%, respectively. This lifted Beijing by two places in the ranking and allowed Japan to enter the top 10 list (Tokyo ranked 15th a year earlier).
Beijing offices
Among the region’s biggest investment projects in the year to the end of January are a series of new offices opened in Beijing by organisations as diverse as the Russian central bank, the National Bank of Pakistan and Germany’s Commerzbank. They are joined by 11 foreign firms, all investing an estimated $80.8m per project in Beijing, according to greenfield investment monitor fDi Intelligence. Individually their value is higher than any single project in the three higher ranked centres. The remaining three projects in Beijing are of smaller value.
Hong Kong leads in outward FDI with $1.54bn, up from seventh last year. The largest project originating from the hub is from the local operations of American International Assurance, which is expanding in the Philippines and investing an estimated $1.07bn – by far the largest outward FDI project from the region.
Tokyo has slipped into second place and slashed its outward FDI by almost two-thirds compared with a year earlier.
